No safe passage; a sinister jitney attack as women report being raped for days – Magnetic Media

Dana Malcolm

Staff writer

Turks and Caicos courts will soon be tasked with trying a convicted sex officer, this time accused of repeatedly raping a woman after posing as a drug driver; This again raises the question of the need for safe local transport.

Elvethan Handfield was refused bail when he appeared in the Magistrates Court on April 29. He had spent at least 13 years in prison on a rape conviction and is now accused of choosing his final victim under the guise of being a teamster or unlicensed taxi driver.

The defendant claims she got into the vehicle on April 19 and told him to take her to the Dock Yard. Instead, Handfield is accused of driving her to a house and forcing her inside at knifepoint, where he then raped her and recorded his actions during the drive over two days (April 19-20).

Jitneys are plentiful in the Turks and Caicos Islands. They are unmarked, unlicensed and often driven by unknown people who have no legal authority to carry passengers. Since there is no formal vetting process, a potential perpetrator would only need a car to pose as one of these drivers and he could strike.

Since the start of the year, at least three women have reported attacks by men posing as road drivers, leading police to issue a safety bulletin in February.

Despite this, the pickup truck business is still operating and even thriving because they fill a gap for the community left open by the lack of safe, reliable, and government-approved transportation.

When we spoke with Department of Motor Vehicles Director Wilbur Caley to find out how many shared cabs are currently licensed to operate, he told us this.

“As I recall, there are about seven licenses.”

That’s a disappointingly low number and is consistent with what Magnetic Media Court correspondent Wilkie Arthur sees on the street every day “I don’t think they’re easily accessible,” Arthur said of the shared taxis. “I would say with certainty that 98 percent of the population uses illegal jitneys.”

The “Community Cabs” were a government-approved solution for short trips, and TCIG had hoped residents would jump at the opportunity to join the fleet of white and blue limousines touted as providing safe, clean and accessible travel. But it didn’t work that way. The number of registered shared taxis is still far lower than the number of jitneys.

“The acceptance of these types of licenses is very, very low. A number of people have expressed interest but are hesitant because they say they don’t want to or can’t compete with the illegal jitneys,” Caley explained.

Technically, as the DMV chief pointed out, jitneys are illegal, but the gray area between necessity and law has created a space for them, and in that darkness predators hide.

In recent years, both adults and schoolchildren have suffered violence from vulture men who took advantage of their position as drivers to carry out attacks.

Even tourists who are usually transported in designated taxis have reported attacks by minibuses, angering legitimate taxi drivers who say they are taking the blame for the actions of an entirely different group.

It is now up to the government to breathe new life into the Community Cab initiative and populate the country’s roads with clean, safe and traceable vehicles rather than putting travelers at risk.